Ethan had held her. Soothed her. And leveled her out enough for him to call Grace. At the time, Livvy hadn’t wanted that, hadn’t wanted the sheriff to see her in this emotional muddle. But it’d been the right thing to do because now they were focused on the investigation.
“Thanks,” Livvy heard Grace say to the person on the other end of her phone line.
Ethan hit Pause on the recording, and Livvy and he shifted their attention to Grace.
“The recordings are legit,” she relayed to them. She pinned her gaze to Ethan. “Are you getting anything from them?”
He nodded. “So far, it’s just as Franklin said. Chloe was jealous of Belinda and went after her. Hank saw what went on, blackmailed her, and Chloe kept the file as leverage over him.”Ethan huffed. “What I can’t figure out is why Chloe didn’t lock the file away instead of shelving it with her other records.”
“Sunny might be able to help with that,” Grace said, surprising them.
“The lab IDed multiple sets of prints on the folder. Ethan’s and yours, of course. Zadie’s and Chloe’s, since theirs are now on file. An unidentified set that no doubt belongs to Franklin.” She paused. “And Sunny’s.”
“Sunny’s?” Livvy questioned. “Why were her prints on the folder? And in the database?”
“She gave them voluntarily earlier today when I told her we needed them for elimination purposes to help the CSIs who were processing the crime scene at New Hope.” Grace shrugged. “Of course, her prints could have gotten on the folder just because she handled it, not knowing what it was. But the tech believes Sunny’s and Zadie’s are the most recent ones. Theirs and a third set that probably belongs to Franklin.”
Livvy considered all of that. Sunny certainly hadn’t mentioned a file like that, and it seemed as if she would have.
“Trust me, I’ll be asking Sunny about this when I pick her up soon.” Grace checked the time. “And FYI, I’ll be taking her to my place. There’s good security there, and you two have enough to deal with right now.”
Livvy couldn’t argue that, though she did want to talk to Sunny. Not only about the contents of that file but any gossip that Sunny might have heard about Chloe’s violent streak. It was possible that Chloe had run-ins with other women about Paul, and if so, they might have info. If they were alive, that is.
“Sunny also asked if tomorrow morning I could take her to the house where her sister’s body was found,” Grace continued. “I reluctantly agreed,” she muttered, not sounding especially pleased about that. “It hasn’t been cleaned yet, which means Zadie’s blood is still there.”
“The house needs to be processed for old blood,” Livvy blurted. “For my…mother’s,” she managed to say. The word felt as if it’d gotten stuck in her throat.
Grace sighed, nodded. “That’s being done as we speak. And the CSIs should be done in a couple of hours. If they turn up anything, they’ll let us know.”
Finding blood or DNA that old was a serious long shot, but it was possible some blood had seeped into the old wood floor and had gotten trapped there.
“I want to see the house, too,” Livvy said.
And that got instant headshakes and disapproving groans from both Grace and Ethan.
“It might trigger my memory,” she argued before Grace could flat-out refuse. “And if I remember something, then it could give us a clearer picture of who murdered Chloe.”
They didn’t dispute that. Couldn’t. But Livvy saw the concern in their eyes. She was feeling a whole lot of concern, too, but this might be the fastest way to recover her memory and catch a killer.
“It’s time I remembered,” Livvy added.
The seconds crawled by. And crawled. Before Grace muttered some profanity and nodded. “All right, you can go there in the morning with Sunny and me. You, too,” she added to Ethan, “since I know you want to be there for Livvy.”
“I do,” he was quick to verify.
“Tomorrow morning at eight, then,” Grace decided. “Meet us there, and maybe we’ll get a break.” She tipped her head to Livvy’s laptop. “Speaking of breaks, anything yet on our Belinda Anderson?”
Livvy was about to say no, but when she looked at the screen, she saw the last entry, and something about it jumped right out at her. Thirty-one years ago, a Belinda Tate Andersonhad testified against her husband, Quentin, in a case of felony domestic violence.
“Maybe,” Livvy heard herself say.
She sat back down on the barstool, her fingers moving quickly now on the keyboard to pull up the file. Ethan and Grace must have realized that she was onto something because they moved in closer so they could see the screen.
And the info loaded.
The picture popped up first. One from an old driver’s license. Livvy felt the slam of emotions. The shock, the grief, the unbearable sadness all rolled into one.
Because that was the face of the dead woman, the one from her nightmares.
